BREAKING FILM NEWS

Thursday, October 8, 2009

OMNI's "Once Upon A Time In Toronto"- October 17...

OMNI Television (Rogers Media) presented a launch event October 8 @ Toronto's downtown Metropolitan Hotel in support of OMNI's new Chinese/Canadian dramatic TV series "Once Upon a Time in Toronto".

The 20-part Mandarin-language series will debut across OMNI stations in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, Saturday October 17th at 8pm, noted as the first mutually supported television production between a Canadian company (Goldspin) and China (Western Movie Group).

OMNI Television will launch "Once Upon A Time In Toronto" October 17th in Vancouver/Victoria on OMNI BC (CHNM-TV), in Calgary on OMNI Calgary (CJCO-TV), in Edmonton on OMNI Edmonton (CJEO-TV) and in Ontario on OMNI.2 (CJMT-TV).

Two back-to-back 1-hour episodes will also be aired in Toronto each week, with Mandarin language dialogue subtitled in Chinese/English.

"This is a proud achievement for Rogers," said Leslie Sole, CEO, Television at Rogers Media.

"'Once Upon a Time in Toronto' reflects the immigrant experience in a tale that relates to people beyond borders, a landmark in multilingual/multicultural television production around the world.”

Director Yang Ya-Zhou and son

Premise of the series follows the intertwining lives of a group of people from different linguistic/cultural backgrounds, forced to deal with emotions and each other, following a tragic accident.

Irene Chu of Toronto's Goldspin Productions Inc. is the Canadian executive producer of the series, directed by China's Yang Ya-Zhou, starring actress Ni Ping as 'Duan Ling', Vancouver's Lora Sun as her daughter 'Zhuang Xiaodie', Elder Vern Harper, a leading member of the Cree First Nation and St. Catherines' Sydney Shugan, discovered during production.

"Once Upon a Time in Toronto" was made possible by OMNI's Independent Producers Initiative, a $32.5 million independent production fund that has so far supported over 400 hours of documentary programming....